But when Isis came to her son Horus, who was then
at nurse at Buto, and had laid the chest out of the way,
Typhon, as he was hunting by moonshine, by chance
lighted upon it, and knowing the body again, tore it into
fourteen parts, and threw them all about. Which when
Isis had heard, she went to look for them again in a certain barge made of papyrus, in which she sailed over all
the fens. Whence (they tell us) it comes to pass, that
such as go in boats made of this rush are never injured by
the crocodiles, they having either a fear or else a veneration for it upon the account of the goddess Isis. And this
(they say) hath occasioned the report that there are many
sepulchres of Osiris in Egypt, because she made a particular funeral for each member as she found them. There
are others that tell us it was not so, but that she made several effigies of him and sent them to every city, taking on
her as if she had sent them his body; so that the greater
number of people might pay divine honors to him, and
withal, if it should chance that Typhon should get the better of Horus, and thereupon search for the body of Osiris,
many bodies being discoursed of and shown him, he might
despair of ever finding the right one. But of all Osiris's
members, Isis could never find out his private part, for it
had been presently flung into the river Nile, and the lepidotus, sea-bream, and pike eating of it, these were for that
reason more scrupulously avoided by the Egyptians than
any other fish. But Isis, in lieu of it, made its effigies,
and so consecrated the phallus for which the Egyptians to
this day observe a festival.
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